Capacitance.

CHILREN... AAAAAAAA. Something important that we learned this week was capacitance. Capacitance is a capacitors ability to store energy in an energy field. A more common form of capacitors is a parallel plate capacitor. The unit used to measure capacitance is Farads and the equation are C=q/v(Capacitance=charge/volts) or C=EoA/d(capacitance=epsilon*area of plates/distance between plates. This all sounds complicated but it is how our keyboard keys, touch screens, and buttons work. There is a certain distance between two different plates below our keys that remains the same unless pushed down. When pushed down the distance changes and sends out electric signals to the computers brain telling whatever you typed up to appear on the screen. This is kind of hard to understand but when put in a smaller perspective like the keyboard example it may be a little easier.

outlet vs. balloon

100,000 volts or 120, these two different measurements of volts(Joules/coulomb) can have a huge effect or no effect at all. A balloon when charged may hold a charge of 100,000 volts, but why doesn't it shock you? When a wall outlet only has 120 volts of charge but is way more lethal than a balloon. This concept is kind of confusing but it basically says that the amount of volts doesn't matter, its the amount of charge per volt. Electric potential energy is the thing to watch out for not electric potential. Everything has electric potential buts its the amount of energy of charge that makes the potential energy kinetic. Thats a little breakdown of how volts and energy of charge are related, and a piece of advice. DO NOT STICK YOUR FINGER OR ANY BARE ELECTRICITY CONDUCTOR IN A WALL OUTLET!!!

Electric forces(BP#2)

I always wondered why no matter how long I dragged my feet on a rug I could not shock anyone. I The reason is because we live in Hawaii we are surrounded by water and there is a lot of moisture in the air which pulls away charge from charged things. In class we got to play around with an apparatus that statically charged a metal ball. The charge was from static electricity caused by friction. This picture above shows another form of static electricity caused by rubbing a balloon on someones hair. The balloon becomes charged as well as the persons hair and they attract each other. This is sort of like the machine that we had in class except the machine produced a lot more energy and we could get shocked from it. This is because our bodies have a charge but not as much as the metal ball produced so when we come close or become in contact with it the reason we get shocked is because its like charges evenly distributing it self among us and the ball. If we leave or hand on it the charge distributes and becomes even and we don't get shocked. If that person touches something or someone else the same thing would happen to him and the person because he holds the charge of the ball. Electricity can be transferred to one another or anything that conducts electricity. The difference in charge of the two objects( hand and metal ball) determines the strength of the force pulling the two charges together. The greater the charge the greater the force. Overall we learned how a simple thing from the balloon and hair trick is the same thing as the apparatus being charged by friction just on a bigger scale.

With break over, its time for work again. In class we are starting a new unit on electricity. It may sound broad and simple but as we slowly progress into the unit things layout to be a little more confusing than I thought they would be. The basics of electricity starts with a charge. In an atom as most people may already know, it contains protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons are positively charged parts, electrons are negatively charged and neutrons contain no charge. Atoms in their elemental state have equal protons and electrons and have no charge, but when an atom takes an electron from another atom then it becomes charged. When this happens, the products are called ions. Positively charged atoms are cations and negatively charged atoms are anions. Obviously a charge can be positive(+) or negative(-) and this depends on what happens within a reaction. When atoms give up, or take electrons from another atom the atom that gives up the electron becomes positively charged and the atom that gains an electron becomes negatively charged. That is the basics of charge. We learned that unlike charges attract and like charges repel. We did a lab that helps us to see that and learn how things become statically charged and how things react when they are charged. The picture above shows an example of the lab. When you rip pieces of tape off of a table it becomes charged and the reaction shown is that they are attracted to each other. When I went home I re-did it and asked myself more questions about charges. The lab gave me a better understanding of things. When I see a reaction of electricity caused by negatively and positively charged atoms I start to think of which object is positive and which is negative. I start to ask more questions to myself and I try to figure out how each object got its charge and what reactions occurred within it to make it that way.